Once upon a time I rented a flat in De Beauvoir with white walls and matching shabby-chic floorboards.
I soon slicked the tired floor in black paint and was happy in my monochrome palace for many years, until the arrival of my twins triggered a surprise craving for colour. Maybe it was just a desperate defence against grubby fingers.
The chosen tin (with the help of Colour Curator Joa Studholme) was Farrow & Ball’s India Yellow, an intense shade that had a peculiar effect on our furniture. My burl wood bureau, once classic and deco-ish, took on a Seventies spirit. My black sofa looked too harsh against the ochre walls but I couldn’t afford an upholsterer, so learnt to live with it.
It was a concise lesson in the way great swathes of colour can disorient, though I still loved the shade. Perhaps it’s why I’m a little wary of the colour-drenching trend — painting everything, including the walls, ceiling and woodwork, the same shade.
It can feel like a blunt instrument, robbing a room of nuance and you of the joy of putting together unexpected combinations. Here are my top 10 tips for satisfying colour.
1. Work with what you can’t change
It’s easy to resent unloved features — a terracotta floor, say — but don’t let that lead you towards something radically different to go with it: you’ve got to work with your “fixed” colours, not against them.
And who knows? The perfect olive green or putty pink could change how you feel about those tiles you can’t afford to replace.
2. Do your research
For London homes, Patrick Baty’s book The Anatomy of Colour is a must. He consults on the decoration of historic buildings and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the way colour has evolved in the city over the past 300 years, from the availability of mineral pigments to the “why” behind changing tastes.
It’s not an academic resource, just a smart human interest book with plenty of glossy pictures.
3. Resist the Changing Rooms-style feature wall
I’ve done tiled walls and bespoke reliefs, but high-contrast accent walls often feel flat and lacking in context.
Instead, make like Le Corbusier and Luis Barragán and use three or four shades to colour-block cupboards, alcoves and stairs, or let colour “bleed” from walls on to joinery. It’s a graphic, architectural look that lends itself particularly well to the clean lines of ex-council flats.
4. Go glossy
If you’ve got low ceilings, gloss paint can reflect light and give a lovely luminous glow. That’s one of our favourite tricks.
Just make sure your plastering job is up to scratch, as gloss is not forgiving on cracks and bumps.
5. Paint your transitional spaces
Sitting with colour is totally different to moving through it. If your rooms lead off a central corridor, there’s something a little Alice in Wonderland about going bold in that space. Just be aware of unintended combinations seen through doorways.
You could also paint the frames — take the colour on to the architrave for extra drama.
6. Try the suit jacket trick
There’s something sophisticated about opening a wardrobe or cupboard to reveal a contrasting colour, like a beautiful lining in a vintage suit. If you have been fairly restrained elsewhere, it can feel like such a special detail.
7. Use your fifth wall
If you want colour underfoot but can’t bear to fiddle with old floorboards, Nordic Knots’s Grand collection of colour-block rugs is your answer. They start from about £200, which is an amazing price for a rug of that quality.
8. Embrace the darkness
A room without windows will never be bright, no matter how much tasteful chalky white you slap on the walls.
For basement conversions and downstairs loos I love Farrow & Ball’s Pantalon, which is a glorious smudgy green that will play into that moody feel.
9. Invest in custom cushions
There’s no quicker way to cheapen a sofa than chucking on a block colour cushion in a slightly wrong shade, so choose a fabric and have them made.
10. Pop into several suppliers
If you go to Pierre Frey for fabrics, you’ll get a completely different take on colour than at Dedar, which favours that very Milanese palette of sexy jewel shades. It’s really hard to reproduce precise colours digitally, so popping into showrooms is good for accuracy.
